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The high end smartphone market is crowded and many firms are vying to create the most attractive user interface in the mobile web, so now attention is shifting to translating this rich web services experience to the mass market. Motorola is expected to lead the charge with a midmarket Android launch, and on the software side, Google has announced its optimized mobile search platform, previously confined to high end handsets, for featurephones.

This is a significant extension of the optimized mobile web experience beyond the rarefied smartphones, a drive that has already been spearheaded by companies like Hutchison INQ, with its mass market phones with integrated Skype or Facebook; and by Nokia with Series 40. In March, Google introduced many refinements to its search engine specifically for devices like the iPhone, and of course to bolster its own Android. These included faster loading of search results, specialized widgets and a search box for Apple Safari and they are now available on the two platforms in 22 countries.

Now the optimized results and search access features are available on a wide range of midrange phones, in 38 languages and more than 60 countries - a blow to Yahoo, which has tended to make more progress in the mobile web services market in emerging economies. Language support indicates the drive to bring the mobile web to high growth countries - included are Turkish, traditional and simplified Chinese, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), Thai, Russian, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Ukrainian and Hindi.

Google has also opened the beta version of its AdSense platform for mobile ads, looking to the new market for advertising within applications. AdSense for Mobile Applications allows developers to earn revenue by displaying text and image ads inside iPhone and Android apps.

"Advertisers are looking for ways to reach potential customers when they are engaged with mobile content, and application developers are looking for ways to show the best ads to their users. We have already had a successful trial of this service with a small number of partners," said Google.

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